New Grad Resume with No Experience: What to Put on It

"Entry-level, 2+ years of experience required" is a real frustration for new grads. But "no experience" is almost never true. Coursework projects, part-time jobs, campus leadership, research, and volunteering all count, as long as you describe them the way employers describe work. This guide shows how to build a strong one-page resume from what you already have.

The student and new grad resume example follows this structure for a graduating information science student.

What counts as experience

Employers hiring new grads aren't expecting a career. They're looking for evidence that you can learn, take responsibility, and finish things. All of these provide it:

• Internships and co-ops, paid or unpaid
• Part-time and summer jobs, even outside your field: reliability and customer skills transfer
• Class projects, especially team projects with real users or a real client
• Research with a professor or lab
• Campus leadership: officer roles, event organizing, managing a club budget
• Volunteering, especially with responsibility (training volunteers, running a program)
• Personal projects: an app, a website, an analysis, a portfolio
• Teaching and tutoring: TA roles, peer tutoring, coaching

Section order for new grads

1. Header: name, city, email, phone, LinkedIn, and a portfolio or GitHub link if you have one.
2. Education: first, because it's your strongest credential right now.
3. Experience: internships and jobs (call it "Internships" if that's all you have).
4. Projects: class or personal projects that show relevant skills.
5. Leadership and Activities: roles with responsibility.
6. Skills: tools, languages, and anything the job posting asks for.

Once you have a year or two of full-time work, move education to the bottom.

The education section

Include your school, degree, major and minor, and graduation date (or "Expected May 2027"). Add:

• GPA if it's 3.5 or higher, or if employers in your field expect it
• Honors: Dean's List, scholarships, honors programs
• Relevant coursework: four to six courses that match the job, not your full transcript
• Thesis or capstone if it's relevant

Skip high school once you're in college, unless it's notable and you're a first- or second-year student.

Write bullets like an employee

The biggest upgrade you can make is writing every entry, even a class project or club role, with the same "action and result" structure professionals use:

• Weak: "Member of the data science club."
• Strong: "Organized weekly workshops for 120 members and ran a 150-person campus datathon on a $6,000 budget."
• Weak: "Worked at a coffee shop."
• Strong: "Trained 6 new baristas and handled opening shifts, serving 300+ customers a morning."
• Weak: "Group project for database class."
• Strong: "Built a course search web app with three classmates; 1,800 students used it during registration week."

Notice the numbers: members, customers, users, budget. They make small experiences concrete. Our guide to writing resume bullet points has more on finding them.

Tailor the skills section

Read three to five postings for the role you want and note the tools and skills they mention. List the ones you genuinely have, in the posting's wording. For technical roles, group them (languages, tools, frameworks). Leave out generic traits like "hardworking" or "team player"; show those through your bullets instead. Our ATS tips explain why matching wording matters.

Keep it to one page

As a new grad you should almost always fit on one page. If you're running over, cut the weakest bullets, trim coursework, and combine small sections, rather than shrinking the font. See how long a resume should be for more.

Common mistakes

• An objective statement about what you want. Employers care what you offer. Skip it, or use a short summary aimed at the role.
• Listing duties instead of results. "Responsible for answering phones" says nothing about how well you did it.
• Unprofessional email addresses. Use a simple firstname.lastname address.
• Typos. Read the PDF out loud once before you send it.
• Fancy templates. Two-column layouts with graphics are harder to read and often parse badly. A clean single column is safer.

Starting point

Field-specific examples help too. If you're aiming at engineering, compare your draft to the software engineer example; for analytics, the data analyst example; for education, the teacher example. You'll see which details experienced candidates emphasize and can aim your entries the same way.

Open the new grad example in the editor, replace it with your own details, and download the PDF. It's totally free, with no account required.